On the Meaning of Flowers
by Rargamonster
Summary: Introspective, Petunia-centric.  She couldn't help but let anger and resentment rule her life.


**On the Meaning of Flowers**

Petunia. Anger and resentment.

Petunia had always had a good memory, and those words had remained burned into her brain for decades, now. She had pulled the book off a shelf and opened it, and then later wished she could go back and close it again, and never know what it had said. She would always wonder now – was it fate? Was it some sort of deity laughing at her and pulling strings? Was this all her life was meant to be?

She and Lily had just been children – it was such a long time ago, back when they still spoke to each other freely, before Lily went away to school and came back changed. Petunia had just learned that a petunia was a flower, and, on one summer's afternoon spent at the library instead of outside in the sweltering heat, wanted to see what they looked like. Lily had scurried off long ago to find her favorite adventure books with pictures of dragons and magicians in them, so Petunia looked through the aisles of nature books alone. She eventually found one with "Victorian Flower Symbolism" written along the spine and, though it was thick and heavy, hefted it over to a little round table.

The first few sentences of the book explained that flowers were used to encode and send hidden messages in times long ago, and after picking through the words on the page she could understand, Petunia skimmed through the pages slowly, reading the name of each flower at the top of the page in large, loopy script. She found lily, which she learned meant beauty and purity. Fitting, she thought, smiling, thinking of her lovely little sister. Beautiful, certainly. Pure, lively, kind, adventurous Lily.

What would Petunia be?

She found the page quickly, and eagerly read the description below: Anger and resentment.

That couldn't be right; Petunia couldn't believe she had gotten the only rotten flower name in existence. She stared down at the page. Anger and resentment. That couldn't describe her. She wasn't angry! That didn't define her life! She flipped the book shut with a satisfying smack and left it.

That moment stuck with Petunia longer than it should have. The agonizing seconds where she wondered what her name would be, convinced that it would be just as fitting as Lily's, only to find it was a condemnation. Petunia pushed away the anger, the jealousy, the resentment, lest the prediction prove itself true.

Petunia was never bright, but she didn't really need to be. She remembered things too easily and too well, and change was always a struggle. School was arduous and confusing as she had to learn and un-learn successive lessons. Negative numbers don't exist? Surprise! They do! Just managed to neaten up your printing penmanship? Surprise! Try cursive! Long division with remainders? Surprise! Fractions!

But Lily was a bright girl, learning all that her teachers set before her with ease. Petunia saw her work, stunned by the lack of difficulty her sister had with the same subjects that had stumped her just a few years before. Petunia had studied, had planned out ways to explain her lessons to her little sister that she would easily understand, and, two years later, when Lily learned the same lessons, she didn't need Petunia's help.

"You understand that? Just from listening in class?" Petunia asked in disbelief.

Lily nodded cheerfully and continued writing her homework in perfect cursive.

Petunia didn't quite understand it, but, hey, Lily _was _her little sister, and she was brilliant. Petunia knew she should have been proud, but it was hard not to be a little jealous of the ease Lily had in life. Not just schoolwork, but something about the refreshing atmosphere that Lily seemed to bring with her everywhere, how people always seemed to be more genuine and happy around her. Petunia certainly didn't envy Lily's closeness with that Snape boy, but she saw the happiness that friendship brought her sister... Wondered why she couldn't foster close friendships like that herself.

Somehow Petunia found herself entrenched in friendships that felt fake, found herself surrounded by so many one-dimensional personalities concerned only with superficiality. Not that Petunia wasn't amused by the gossip running around her social circles, nor that she was unconcerned by appearances and boyfriends and someday finding a husband and raising children and all that, but... Every so often, she would wonder if this was really all there was to life, all this meaningless socializing, putting up facades of friendliness to get into the right circles or to hear valuable tidbits or rumors. It was all just some all-encompassing, complicated, passive-aggressive power play, then you died. There had to be more to life than that.

There was so much more in Lily. She brought a profound brightness to even the most mundane interactions; was so imaginative and intelligent and, in a way, intimidating, though Petunia always reminded herself that _she's my little sister. _She would have a bright future, probably accomplish amazing things that Petunia couldn't even imagine. But that was okay, Petunia told herself, she didn't want that kind of pressure and responsibility, so she would have to be content with her vapid little social circles and utterly underwhelming opportunities in life, because she was nowhere near as amazing as Lily.

But it never quite sat right with Petunia, because she wanted to be special, to be loved and treasured in the same way Lily was by seemingly everyone she met.

The day the letter came wasn't actually all that much of a shock, and yet at the same time it was the biggest disappointment of a lifetime. There always was something different about Lily, and this was just one more conformation that she would become something greater than Petunia could ever aspire to.

Lily left for school that year in a whirlwind of confusion and excitement - babbling about the foreign things she read about in her school books and the amazing things she would discover that year - before Petunia even had time to process what had happened. She had far too much time the rest of the year to process, however – four months of reading exuberant letters carried home by unfriendly owls detailing wonders she would never have the opportunity to see – four months of ruminating in a mental hurricane of self-doubt, wondering why her sister had been chosen and why she had been passed over – four months of being ignored by her parents in favor of Lily's tales and accomplishments – four months until Lily returned home for Christmas. Why was Petunia being so constantly surpassed by the sister she helped raise?

Why was Lily not content to live in the kind of miserable mediocrity that Petunia had resigned herself to long ago?

They fought during those weeks, and Petunia penned an ill-thought-out letter to the headmaster that was met with a disappointing (although utterly unsurprising) reply. She hid the letter away in a desk drawer, but apparently didn't hide it well enough, because it got brought up in an argument by that _freak _sister of hers in an argument years later.

They were never close again.

Petunia continued on as she had before, socializing, kissing ass where she had to and keeping an eye out for anything useful, manipulating the social hierarchy to make sure she would rise ever higher. She would not continue to come in second to that freak of a sister, although that meant forging her own network where she was at the top.

It was painful to see her parents and to constantly be reminded that she was only second-best (and, to add insult to injury, not even a close second).

She moved away as soon as she could, got herself a small flat in the city and a boring office job, and started seeing an ambitious businessman named Vernon Dursley. He was a bit of a workaholic, rather pigheaded, and had less personality than the gum wrappers crumpled at the bottom of her handbag, but that suited Petunia just fine. A boring man in her boring life.

Eventually, he proposed. She had nothing better to do than accept, so she did.

Lily was not invited to the wedding. Petunia half-hoped that she would turn up anyway, as proof her little sister cared for her at all.

She lounged alone in her room the night before her wedding, finished off one bottle of wine, and started another. What was she _thinking, _marrying a man like Vernon Dursley? He was an absolute knucklehead, and she was condemning herself to more of the same by marrying him – more dull, frustrating insincerity, more manipulating and bickering, more falseness. More of the life she had always lived.

Her glass was empty, and she decided not to refill it, but, rather, to continue drinking straight from the bottle.

Memory started getting fuzzy around there. She remembered a loud _crack_ and Lily appearing in the room, Lily apologizing for things that were never really her fault in the first place. Lily wanting to be part of her life again.

There were things Petunia could do in the magical world if she wanted, Lily told her, things like potion brewing. You didn't need to be magical for everything, and besides, Petunia had always been good at cooking, and potion brewing and cooking were very similar.

Petunia laughed.

Lily looked confused, wasn't this what Petunia had always wanted? She thought Petunia would be glad to see her again, after all, they were sisters, and they hadn't spoken in such a long time.

Petunia was glad, but she would never admit that. There was too much anger, too much resentment there for her to accept her sister back in to her life.

So she said, "What on earth makes you think I ever wanted to be a freak like you?"

She woke up the next morning alone in bed, with a headache and a couple of empty wine bottles on the floor.

She was married that evening, but there was no joy.

Years later, Petunia raised her son with pride (but little joy). She heard Lily had gotten married and had a son about the same age as little Dudley, but she tried not to think about them much.

Vernon asked her the son's name one night, which was very out of the norm (Vernon thought about her family even less than she did). She wondered about them then, what was happening in her sister's life, how their son was growing up. No, she shouldn't think about them, because that would only lead to more pain and more thoughts about the things that could have been.

The next morning she found a very unexpected surprise on her doorstep.

She was dead. And Petunia was stuck with her freak sister's freak son.

She read the letter tucked into the basket next to the little baby boy. She'd read it many times already, but the words wouldn't stick in her mind - there was too much of a jumble of thought and emotion that she couldn't push aside.

Lily was dead. Lily, her little sister. Lily. Lily, with the perfect handwriting and bright smiles. Lily, who Petunia had helped raise, had helped change diapers and give bottles and read her first book together and drawn crayon pictures together and played on swingsets together and grown up together. Her little sister. Dead.

Petunia wondered where she would be buried, wondered if she could visit. The letter said nothing of a burial site or a funeral. Maybe she wasn't allowed, she mused, Lily and that husband of hers would probably be buried with _their _kind. Another place Petunia was forbidden to enter.

Angrily, she swiped the beginnings of a tear off her face and threw the letter away from her. The cold, kind words within were too reminiscent of the letter she had received so many years ago, and she was better off putting that from her mind. Her Dudley and _that boy_ had both quieted down to sleep already, and she gathered both boys up to put in their cribs (one purchased that afternoon, last minute). How would her Dudley's life change because of this new addition to... Not a new addition to their family, she thought firmly. She would not have Dudley suffer through his childhood as she had through hers, at the hands of _family._

Her sister's brat looked nothing like her, he must take after the good-for-nothing husband. The bastard that couldn't even save Lily's life. The bastard that left her alone to die to save their child.

The boy had her eyes, at least; and the one time Petunia had gotten a smile and a giggle out of him that day, she thought she felt that same air of brightness that had encompassed Lily.

Dudley would not live his life feeling forever inferior to his cousin. Any of this magic that the boy might have would not be allowed to present itself. Even if that meant squashing the spirit out of him, even if she and Vernon had to extinguish the brightness out of him, day by day. Dudley would not grow up second-best to a freak, and the boy's mere presence would not put her family in danger.

They both slept, so peacefully in the face of tragedy.

Harry was surprisingly average at everything, it seemed. Apparently he didn't take after Lily very much, Petunia thought. Unfortunately, average was more than enough to leave Dudley in the dust in most cases; her son had even more struggles with his schoolwork than Petunia remembered having as a child.

That was alright, of course. Schoolwork wasn't the only thing that mattered; perfect grades and a magical education hadn't done anything to save Lily's life.

It was connections that would help Dudley; friends and acquaintances had introduced her to Vernon and had helped Vernon rise in his company. Dudley would go to schools where he would meet all manner of powerful friends and someday have a secure future.

Harry would be lucky to get that; he struggled to make friends in school. It didn't help that his freakishness kept showing through and strange, inexplicable things kept happening around him. As much as she and Vernon tried, they couldn't stop the boy's magic from bursting out and, frustrated at the futility of their efforts, they began punishing him more severely. Maybe soon it would sink in.

She was constantly frazzled from the constant subtle reminders of Harry's abnormality, hoping that Dudley wasn't picking anything up and wasn't realizing that his cousin could do things he could not. Thankfully, Dudley seemed a bit dense, but that was alright, he would be happier for it in the long run. In the meantime, she spoiled her son and lavished him with love - the love and recognition she wished she had from her parents when she was young.

These were the thanks they got for taking the boy in? For raising a child not their own? Over the years, terrorized by snakes, chased out of their house and around the country by phantom letters, Marge being blown up, their fireplace destroyed, Dudley in the danger of losing his soul, the entire family in danger of being killed off by the same monster that murdered Lily...

They were forced to leave their home yet again. Petunia felt she should say something, anything, to the boy.

He would have to face that evil wizard, and Petunia was well aware that he could die. Lily was brilliant, and she was killed and, as far as she could tell, Harry was less than brilliant. A part of her mind jumped forward and said it didn't matter if the rotten boy died, but a deeper part of her hesitated at the door.

This was Lily's son, the only thing that remained of her sister. Petunia forced herself to meet his eyes, just briefly, and felt she was confronted by Lily's disapproving gaze. _Why have you neglected my son, _Lily's eyes asked her, and Petunia couldn't find an answer.

She turned. She'd always hated the boy, because he reminded her of her sister, who she had loved and hated. She'd always loved him, because he reminded her of her sister, who she had loved and hated.

There was a lot of anger. There was a lot of resentment.

She got in the car.


End file.
